Press Room

How Do Communication, Race, and Class Affect Police-Citizen Relations in 2015?

May 14, 2015

Experts Available

Race/Class/Gender,
Social Justice

Washington, DC - Unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray has sparked national conversations about joblessness, race, and police violence that have been simmering for years. Gray’s death is just one of several recent and highly publicized deaths involving police officials.

Is there more than one message being conveyed by those protesting Gray’s death?

How can communication between police and communities be improved?

What role does technology play in the issues being discussed (civilian camera-phones, police body cameras)?

Communication expert Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead of Loyola University Maryland says that the riots in Baltimore can be viewed through various lenses, including from a communication perspective. Prof. Whitehead specializes in the intersections of communication, race, and class.

Dr. Whitehead’s research is on communication, race, class, and gender.

She frequently provides Baltimore media with commentary on race, including a recent, four-part series in theBaltimore Sun, “From Enslavement to Freedom,” and she is the author of three books including “Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America,” released in 2015.

About the National Communication Association

The National Communication Association (NCA) advances Communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media, and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific, and aesthetic inquiry. NCA serves the scholars, teachers, and practitioners who are its members by enabling and supporting their professional interests in research and teaching. Dedicated to fostering and promoting free and ethical communication, NCA promotes the widespread appreciation of the importance of communication in public and private life, the application of competent communication to improve the quality of human life and relationships, and the use of knowledge about communication to solve human problems. NCA supports inclusiveness and diversity among our faculties, within our membership, in the workplace, and in the classroom; NCA supports and promotes policies that fairly encourage this diversity and inclusion.